WordPress 6.5 has been delayed due to disagreements over a new feature that would have required some websites to download a plugin to keep them running.
Source directory problem
What derailed version 6.5 is a new font library feature for managing fonts that also makes using Google Fonts GDPR compliant. The GDPR compliance part is a nice feature that allows a publisher to connect to Google Fonts and download fonts locally instead of serving them from Google’s servers. This is what makes them GDPR compliant because Google servers will not have access to the IP address of your site visitor.
The fonts themselves will be stored in a new location, /wp-content/fonts/. However, it was recognized that doing this would cause errors due to the inability of some file systems to store fonts in this directory. The compromise that the core contributors initially accepted was to require buggy sites to use a plugin (Fonts to Load) in order to work with WordPress 6.5.
This plan didn’t go well because it didn’t fit the design philosophy of making WordPress work out of the box.
There was strong opposition from the WordPress community.
Among the comments:
“I believe this is a major mistake that deviates from the core WordPress philosophies, the existing technical infrastructure, and the requirements and shipping plan established in version 6.5. … By removing a key aspect of the engagement plan, it undermines the whole plan and means we’re basically shipping something we know is broken with 6.5.
Several commenters agreed that the original plan was flawed, incl this:
“So basically, the decision to move uploadable fonts out of the uploadable folder has already been proven to be problematic before even launching with partial testing.
And TBH’s ‘wp-content/uploads/fonts’ path was semantically better in the first place.”
So the fonts are again stored in the most compatible location of /wp-content/uploads/fonts/.
And this led to the announcement that 6.5 would be delayed by a week:
“Based on community feedback on the WP6.5 Unlock: Font Libraries and Synchronized Pattern Overrides and Font Library follow-up posts, there has been a change in the WordPress 6.5 release schedule and a final in the font library.
…This approach ensures that as many sites as possible can benefit from the new font library feature without having to install or configure anything. … Shipping a feature that requires additional configuration or technical knowledge is not in keeping with the guiding philosophies that have helped the project mature into the successful project it is today.
Not without some minor gripes
The change of where the files will be stored coincided with the observation that storing fonts in the /uploads/ directory is not semantically correct because fonts are downloaded in the case of Google Fonts, among other observations.
The release of WordPress 6.5 is now scheduled for Tuesday, April 2, 2024.
Read the full announcement:
The release of WordPress 6.5 has been delayed by 1 week
Featured image by Shutterstock/PBXStudio
